


Find Me in the Forums

by EchoTheStorm



Category: Gravity Falls, ParaNorman (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 10:49:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17865845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoTheStorm/pseuds/EchoTheStorm
Summary: Ever since what happened with Agatha and the Judges, Norman’s interest in the dead, especially the living dead, has grown. Just as unpopular as ever, he’s developed the habit of lurking on an online forum about zombies, trying to see if anyone else has seen what he’s seen and the town of Blithe Hollow would like to forget. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so alone.





	Find Me in the Forums

Norman expected things would be different after what happened with Agatha and the Judges. For the most part, he was right. Before, when people thought he was weird, they’d tease him. Now, they still thought he was weird, but they kept more of a distance. They were probably afraid of him. A night where zombies came to life and that one weird kid from school defends them from the entire town, then disappears into the woods with one of them and, shortly after, the zombies and the ominous storm with the cackling witch vanish, surprisingly, didn’t convince people that Norman was, well, _normal_.

He still talked to the neighborhood ghosts, who were still friendly towards him, and even regarded him with some sort of respect for what he did.

“That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,” remarked the soldier one day on the walk to school.

Norman, with half an eye on the neighbors watching him from across the street, stammered out a “thank you” and kept walking.

When he got to school, the kids, like always, stopped what they were doing, a silent hush taking over the courtyard. He walked through the path they carved for him, energy coming back into the crowd as the distance between him and them grew. He brushed it off, only a little disheartened. At least no one was shoving or tripping him anymore. He kept his gaze on the floor as he pushed the school doors open and made it to his locker.

As he turned the corner to his locker, he heard two familiar voices: his best friend Neil talking animatedly about a movie, and his other friend Salma countering his glowing praise with snide remarks about how unrealistic it was for aliens to befriend humans.

“I mean, come on, even if aliens really did exist, do you really think that they’d just come to a new planet to make new friends? Is that what Christopher Columbus did?”

“But they’re friendly aliens! They're nothing like some old dead guy! And how could aliens _not_ exist?” Neil saw Norman turn the corner from over Salma's shoulder. “Right, Norman?”

He approached them. “I-I guess so?”

Neil beamed. “See?”

Salma folded her arms and rolled her eyes. “'I guess so’ doesn't mean 'yes.’”

“But we saw zombies last week! And Norman can see ghosts! Why are you drawing the line at aliens?”

And with that, the unspoken rule that had been hovering over everyone’s heads since the incident was broken.

“I actually saw them,” Salma said, after a beat. She adjusted her glasses. “The entire town saw them.”

“And the ghosts?”

Again, there was another beat of uncomfortable silence.

“Well… I mean… you believe Norman,” Salma finally concluded. “And given what’s happened… you’re… not a very good liar,” Salma finished, turning to Norman.

Something inside Norman died out. So even after all that, people still didn’t believe him. It was one thing to feel it, but another thing to have someone say it, even if it was Salma.

“Thanks, Salma.”

“No, I mean… I guess?” Norman watched her wrestle with her thoughts. This was probably the most tact she’d ever tried applying to any situation. “It’s just that, you know, I can’t see what you see.”

Neil coughed, trying to diffuse the tension he unintentionally caused. “So, uh, what do you guys think about that math test second period?”

“Oh, it’s gonna be so easy!” Salma blurted out, her voice higher-pitched than it was just seconds ago.

“I dunno, it’s hard to remember all those geometry formulas,” Neil said.

“Well if you studied, maybe you wouldn’t have such a hard time,” Salma replied, back in familiar territory.

The two continued to talk about Mr. Burne’s math test, as Norman turned to his locker. It was completely blank. At that point even the writing would’ve been welcome. He looked over a Neil’s locker. It was blank, too. As he looked over, he caught Neil’s eye, who flashed him an apologetic look before he continued talking to Salma.

— — —

“Hey, I’m sorry about what happened today,” Neil said as they walked out of the courtyard later that day. “She can be really skeptical with things. But she does care about you.”

Norman sighed, keeping his gaze on the ground. “No, it’s not her. I just… everyone’s like that. And ever since what happened people have been different.”

“Well yeah,” Neil said, “but at least they’re being nicer to you. And me! I haven’t gotten Alvin’ed in a week! That’s, like, a new record!”

Norman chuckled, but kept his eyes on his feet. “That’s good,” he admitted, “but now people really are avoiding me, for different reasons. I think I might’ve missed it when they did tease me. At least then I was still approachable.”

“Oh, you don’t really want that,” Neil said, a little too dismissively. “And who really needs all those people? Hey, I believe you.”

A small smile broke onto Norman’s face, just for a second. “Well, I know that.”

“So you’ve got one person standing by you—literally!”

Norman smiled again, and finally looked over at Neil, who had a grin of his own. Maybe Neil had a point. Even if everyone else was still wary of him, at least he had one friend.

At that point, they reached the point where they’d split. Neil’s house was left, and Norman’s house was a little ways further straight ahead.

“So my folks wanna do something right now, but I can call later if you want?” Neil said.

“Sure,” Norman replied.

“Great! Talk to you later!” Neil turned left and began walking away. “Just don’t forget, you’re not alone!” he called behind him.

“Thanks Neil!” Norman shouted back.

He started walking again, grateful that, even if he only had one friend, he had Neil. He couldn’t imagine a friend any better than him.

He came home to an empty house. Mom and dad were at work, Courtney was probably out with friends, and Grandma was doing whatever she did when she wasn’t floating around the house. Taking comfort in the silence, he went to his room and immediately fell onto his bed, plopping his backpack at the foot of it. He laid there in silence for a few moments, relishing in the fact that he wasn’t being judged by anyone, and that he was truly alone to himself.

He eventually rolled over to where his desk sat next to the bed, and plucked the battered laptop off of it, then rolled back into a comfortable position on the bed. Laying on his stomach, he opened his laptop and waited for the desktop to appear as it groaned to life. When it finally did, he clicked on the icon resembling an eyeball and waited for the web browser to pop up. Once it loaded, he clicked on one of the bookmarks, his most recent bookmark: unexplainedsightings.com/zombies.

It sounded so cheesy, and most of the posts were obviously fake, but ever since Norman saw the dead rise from their graves, he had to see if it’d ever happened anywhere else. Even if most of the posts were duds, it was still entertaining to see how people would try to pass off ketchup as blood, or painted rubber balls as eyes, as proof of real zombies. They reminded him of his favorite zombie movies. They also made the occasional, realistic images seem all the more real.

Norman idly scrolled through the posts, which usually didn’t update much in a day, enjoying the usual fake sightings. A user named ‘z0mBiEs4LiFe’ had been particularly creative, constructing a papier-mâché face mask and climbing out of a “grave.” His amusement quickly vanished, however, when he scrolled down to the next post. The post right after it was just a text post titled, “YOU MORONS,” by ‘the_only_smart_one.’ Brows furrowed, he clicked the ‘Expand’ button to find a short post:

 _Why do you people bother with all this fake shit? Don’t you have lives? Just accept that zombies and ghosts and other supernatural things_ _aren’t_ real _. You guys aren’t even good at faking it, so stop wasting everyone’s time by trying to pretend you saw a zombie in you’re backyard._

“Huh,” was all Norman could say. ‘the_only_smart_one’ was right to a degree. The forum was full of fake posts, but he didn’t understand why anyone would get so annoyed with it. Several people seemed to agree, as the post had over fifty dislikes and multiple comments. He scrolled the comments calling ‘the_only_smart_one’ a troll, or telling them to shut up, and stopped at a comment by ‘pinetree’:

_Hey dude, this site’s just for fun, so don’t take things so seriously. And don’t say you know for sure zombies aren’t real. If you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you’d think otherwise._

_*your_

Norman was stunned, rereading the words, _“If you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you’d think otherwise”_ a few times. Someone had actually seen things? pinetree had no replies, not yet anyway. Norman clicked on the username and looked through pinetree’s profile. Aside from that comment, there was only one other post from that user on the zombie thread, made two months ago:

_I’ve spent the past month wondering if I’d ever see a real zombie and it finally happened! I don’t have any pictures of them but I have pictures of what they did to the house. Note: If you ever have a zombie problem, sing karaoke with two other people. It sounds ridiculous but it works._

Attached were two images. One of the side of a house, badly torn up with green slime coating the sides of the house and grass, and what looked like bones strewn across the ground. The second image was a photo of one of the rooms inside, most likely a living room. The TV was knocked over and completely destroyed, as was the armchair that used to sit in front of it. Trash littered the floor, amongst more green slime.

_Karaoke?_

In those brief seconds of hope, Norman actually thought someone had seen real zombies like he had. Now… it all just seemed so absurd. But was it absurd enough to be real? The post only had one comment, from a user named ‘xXlivefromthedeadXx’:

_not even a photo of a zombie? lmao i think i know who trashed ur house: TEENAGERS!!!_

Norman was apt to agree with them, but then… what was the green slime? And what was with the detail about the karaoke? But then, even if pinetree was telling the truth, those zombies were nothing like the zombies he saw. Wait. Were the Judges even zombies? At the time Norman stopped calling them “zombies” because he thought it was derogatory, but maybe they really were something different. Or whatever pinetree saw was something different.

Norman laid there in bed for a while, going back and forth about whether or not he should contact pinetree. This was the closest he’s ever gotten to someone else possibly seeing a real zombie. Did that mean he wasn’t the only one who’s dealt with this sort of thing?

Figuring he had nothing to lose, he clicked the ‘Message’ button on pinetree’s profile. He typed a short message, then read over what he wrote:

_Hi pinetree,_

_I saw your posts. I don’t post here, but I have seen zombies before, among other things. Real ones, I swear._

He reread the message over once more, then added:

_How does karaoke help? I did something different._

Satisfied with what he wrote, he clicked the ‘Send’ button with only a little bit of hesitation.


End file.
